Le Hérisson: A Place for Everyone in Simi Valley
Mineko Ito had always wanted her own place.
From when she was very young, she had always been enamored with the cakes and pastries she’d seen in cookbooks. Growing up in a busy Japanese household, her family didn’t really celebrate holidays like Christmas or Easter, but that didn’t keep Mineko from planning extravagant birthday bashes and Christmas parties as she worked alongside them in the family-run grocery store owned by her grandmother.
When she grew older, she went to the hospitality school Ferrandi in Paris, where she trained in the art of patisserie. From there, her career took off.
She started working as a pastry chef in upscale hotel kitchens (including the Beverly Hills Hotel, Mr. C and Koi). Her sky-high standards and outstanding skills helped her become the manager of several of these kitchens. Her reputation and connections gave her the opportunity to service big events like Academy Awards shows and celebrity birthdays, notably Conan O’Brien and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Even as she went on to manage the baking for many celebrities and hotels, she was always on the lookout for a place she could call her own. A place where she could bring the taste of high-quality and beautiful bakes to anyone who wanted it, at an accessible price.
As her portfolio grew, so, in turn, did the family. She met and married her husband, Paul Malcolm. She had a baby and took a break from the chef scene to raise her child. The break was nice, she says, but she wanted to go back eventually.
When she was ready to enter the industry again, she intentionally aimed for a lower stress job, intending to slow down. Unfortunately, that wasn’t in the cards for her. She was swept right back into the thick of it. She found work managing a hotel kitchen as a pastry chef, and she ran a bakery connected to a Japanese grocery store, but neither was quite what she was looking for. She still didn’t have her own place: a place where she could develop recipes at any time, a bit of an experimental kitchen for herself; a place she could feed the dreams of others like herself.
As she worked, she never stopped looking for the place that would fit her and the café she’d been wanting for so long. Finally, she came across a little storefront in Simi Valley that had housed an Asian fusion café that closed during the pandemic. It had everything she needed. As to the name, “Le Hérisson is French for hedgehog,” she says. “Aside from being an adorably cute and furry critter, hedgehogs are also a symbol of good luck!” A winning combination, perhaps.
Le Hérisson is a café that radiates Mineko. It’s elegant and refined, but still feels welcoming. Every detail from the color of the paint and the wall hangings to the herbs and flowers in the water cooler is a deliberate decision.
The food is much the same. Her café boasts French-Japanese fusion pastries, which means she makes her pastries the French way, but often incorporates Japanese ingredients, like matcha and sweet red beans. She shops for all the ingredients herself, keeping it organic wherever she can. She makes things to her standards. “If I don’t think it’s good enough, I won’t serve it,” she says.
The same amount of thought goes into her drink menu. The coffee is sourced from Sir Owlverick’s, a small-batch roaster she knows in Anaheim, and her hojicha (a green tea) is imported from Kyoto, Japan, where she grew up.
From the food to the drinks, even to the decor, it’s easy to see how much she cares about her place. It is her place, after all. A place where she can take dozens of orders for Christmas cakes, a place anyone can taste extravagance, a place for celebration and for community.
Her place.
